Tin Badge

by Len Levinson

  “You’re going to fire him, Daddy,” Jennifer said pertly. “That’s what you’re going to do with him.”

  “That man who was just in here—I know who he is. He comes to town regularly—I’ve seen him before. He’s a traveling salesman for one of the big companies out east, and wherever he goes from now on, he’s going to tell everybody that Rawlins is a drunk and a ruffian, and he’ll warn people not to come to Petie because of Rawlins. It’s just the kind of thing that can hurt the economic development of this town. We need people to say good things about us, not bad things.”

  “When are you going to fire Sheriff Rawlins, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know,” Randlett said, looking perplexed, “but I suppose I’ll have to do it soon. We can’t tolerate much more of this kind of behavior from Rawlins. It’s just too darn undignified, and what’s worse, it’s bad for business.”

  “Out of my way, goddamn it!” said Rawlins.

  He stood impatiently in front of his office, and a workman was installing a new plate of glass into the door. The workman stepped hastily out of his way, and Rawlins opened the door, charging into the room.

  He didn’t bother to take off his hat, as he sat behind his desk. Pritchard looked at him curiously. Rawlins seemed to be in an unusual state of agitation.

  Rawlins’s desk was piled high with wanted posters. Earlier in the day he’d emptied out all the file cabinets and boxes, and some of the wanted posters were twenty years old, yellowed and tattered, falling apart.

  Rawlins had gone through all the posters and hadn’t found anybody that resembled John Stone. That’s why he’d been in an unusually rotten mood when he’d gone to the Paradise Saloon. If he hadn’t been in such a mood, he might’ve left the salesman alone.

  But he’d noticed something in the Paradise, and it set off a spark in his brain. About ten years ago, Rawlins had been passing through the town of Lanesboro, and they’d had a certain outlaw in jail. This outlaw had robbed a stagecoach and been caught by the local sheriff’s posse. Sheriff Rawlins stopped by the Lanesboro jail to pick up his own prisoner, and got a good look at close range at the outlaw. Two weeks later, after having returned to Petie, he’d learned that the outlaw had been busted out of jail by members of his gang. They’d attacked the jail in the middle of the night and blown down a wall with dynamite.

  Rawlins had forgotten about the incident, but now it was in the forefront of his mind again, because he’d seen that outlaw just now in the Paradise Saloon. The outlaw had been sitting at a table with a man who wore long blond sideburns. Rawlins may’ve been a drunk and a bully, but he’d been a lawman for twenty years and never forgot a face.

  He searched through the wanted posters again, because he recalled coming across the picture of the outlaw earlier in the day when he’d been looking for John Stone. He hadn’t paid any particular attention to it at the time, because it had no relevance to John Stone. It registered quickly in his mind that it was of the outlaw he’d seen in the Lanesboro jail, and he’d passed it by.

  His brows furrowed in concentration, he thumbed through the piles of posters again. He’d forgotten the outlaw’s name, and exactly in which pile the picture had been. Five piles of posters sat on his desk, and he’d just have to go through them all again. The life of a lawman wasn’t all gunfighting in the middle of the street. A lot of it was boring detail work that the average citizen didn’t even know about.

  That’s what made him hate John Stone. Stone had managed to break up one bank robbery, and somehow he was the hero of the town, while Rawlins had given his life to Petie.

  Rawlins knew he was getting old, and knew he was a drunkard, but he thought he still was ten times more man than John Stone. Somehow he had to prove that to the people of Petie.

  Slowly he searched through the wanted posters. His eyes blurred over and occasionally he had to take a drink from his bottle to fortify himself. A parade of faces passed in front of him, and they were young and old, wore hats or were bareheaded, had dark hair or light hair, but each and every one had a sinister expression on his face, men who’d cut your throat for a dime.

  Finally, in the third pile, he saw him. It was the same long face and thin mouth he’d seen at the Paradise. Rawlins picked up the wanted poster and held it up to the light, so he could see better.

  He was wanted dead or alive, and his name was Deke Casey. A five-hundred-dollar reward was offered. He was leader of an outlaw band that committed murder, stagecoach holdups, bank robberies, and cattle rustling.

  Bank Robberies. Rawlins flashed on the bank robbery that Stone had broken up yesterday. Had Deke Casey been mixed up in that? Rawlins took out a stogie and lit it up, puffing until his head disappeared in blue smoke. Could it be that Deke Casey was going to try to rob the Petie Savings Bank again?

  Rawlins had been friends with outlaws in the days before he became a lawman. He’d drunk and gambled with them, gone whoring with them, and occasionally had rustled cattle with them. He knew how they thought, and tried to put himself into Deke Casey’s mind.

  It hit him like a slap in the face. John Stone had killed eight bank robbers yesterday, and if they’d been Deke Casey’s men, Deke Casey would want revenge. Outlaws had their own warped code of justice. Maybe Deke Casey was in town to kill John Stone.

  Rawlins puffed his cigarette. He ought to warn Stone, and he and Stone should arrest Casey without delay. If they managed it right, they could take Casey with a minimum of trouble. It was the proper thing to do.

  But Rawlins knew what’d happen if he and Stone captured Deke Casey. The mood of the citizens being what it was, Stone probably would get all the credit, while Rawlins’s role would be denigrated.

  The alternative would be for him to go back to the Paradise alone right now, put his gun in Deke Casey’s face, and place him under arrest.

  That’d be dangerous, because Deke Casey probably wouldn’t surrender quietly, and he hadn’t been alone. He’d been sitting with a young man with blond hair who’d been giving Rawlins dirty looks. There’d be gunplay, no doubt about that, but Rawlins thought he could handle it. He’d handled worse in the past.

  But why should he risk his life for John Stone? Rawlins realized that if he arrested Deke Casey, the townspeople wouldn’t respect him any more than they did now. They expected him to arrest people. It was his job. They were so used to his protection and skill that they took him for granted.

  Rawlins leaned back in his chair and puffed his stogie. Maybe he should let Deke Casey kill John Stone, and then, after the smoke cleared, Rawlins would arrest Casey. Then the townspeople would be forced to see, right before their eyes, that John Stone was really nothing more than a flash in the pan, and that he, Sheriff Buck Rawlins, was the better man.

  Rawlins knew he was embarking on a hazardous course whose outcome couldn’t be accurately predicted. A man like Deke Casey wasn’t anybody to fool with. But Rawlins thought he’d take the chance. Although he hated the townspeople, he wanted them to respect him. This was the strange paradox of his alcoholic life, and it pushed him over the edge.

  I’ll just stay in the background and keep my eyes open, he thought. Let John Stone look out for himself, if he thinks he’s so smart.

  Chapter Five

  John Stone opened his eyes, and at first he didn’t know where he was. He was accustomed to waking up on the prairie, with the sky above and his head on his saddle, wearing the clothes he’d worn the day before, bearded and filthy, or he’d wake up in a small hotel room in a strange town he’d never been in before, but now he was in a luxurious large bedroom, and everything was white.

  He got out of bed and walked to the window, pulling the drapes to the side. The sun was low on the horizon; it was late in the afternoon.

  He felt well rested and strong, and his headache was gone. Sitting on the bed again, he rolled his first cigarette of the day.

  There was a knock on the door. “Captain Stone?” asked Esmeralda the maid.

  “What is it?” he asked.


  “Dinner will be served in a half hour, Captain Stone.”

  He washed his face and hands and rinsed out his mouth. Then he shaved with his straight razor. It was a pretty good razor, but not as good as the one his father had given him when he went away to West Point. That razor had been lost long ago during the war, when they’d had to abandon a position quickly and leave everything behind.

  He tried not to think too much of his mother and father, because it was too painful, and the pain distracted him from whatever he had to do. They’d died of illness and heartbreak within a few weeks of each other after the plantation had been burned to the ground by Sherman’s army toward the end of the war. Stone had found out about it in a letter he’d received from Marie shortly before the battle of Sayler’s Creek. He couldn’t go home, because he couldn’t walk away from his cavalry troop when it was at the front, but many a Union soldier had dropped beneath his flashing saber during the fight that followed, and that had been his revenge.

  Now he had no more rancor left. Unlike others, he’d spent all his on the field of battle for four long bloody years. Now all he wanted to do was find Marie and put his life back together again.

  He reached for his gunbelts, but stopped his hands in midair. He was going to dinner with civilized people; there was no need to wear guns. To be on the safe side, he dropped his knife into its sheath in his boot.

  He looked at himself in the mirror and saw a tall man with his dark blond hair worn short and parted neatly on the left side, just like when he was in the army. He didn’t suppose he’d changed much since then, except the lines in his face were a little deeper, and his body had filled somewhat.

  He left his room and descended the stairs to the first floor of the house. The sun streamed through the windows and Jennifer Randlett walked toward him from the dining room. She wore a long gown, and her eyes were sparkling.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  “Like a baby.”

  They entered the dining room, and the table was set for three. Mayor Randlett, wearing a suit and tie, appeared through another doorway, carrying a bottle of whiskey.

  “Care for a drink?” he asked Stone.

  “Please.”

  Mayor Randlett poured the drink and handed it to Stone. “I propose a toast,” he said. “To our new deputy sheriff—John Stone!”

  He touched his glass to Stone’s, and both of the men drank. Mayor Randlett sat at one end of the table, Stone at the other, and Jennifer in the middle with her back to the window. It was a long table and a considerable distance separated each of them.

  Esmeralda brought out the tureen of soup and placed it on the table. She took Stone’s bowl and filled it with steaming chicken broth. Then she served Jennifer and Mayor Randlett. Stone kept glancing surreptitiously at Jennifer. She was really an extraordinarily pretty woman, he realized.

  He waited for her to taste her soup, then dipped his spoon in his bowl. It was delicious, so different from the restaurant food he usually ate, or the stuff he wolfed down on the trail. Like so many other aspects of the Randlett mansion, it reminded him of Albemarle, where he’d eaten like a prince three meals a day all his life until he’d left for West Point at the age of eighteen.

  “Sorry you had a bad night,” Mayor Randlett said. “Hope you’re not discouraged with your job.”

  “We’ll see how tonight goes.”

  “Should be easier. This isn’t a bad town. I hate to say it, but the biggest law and order problem we have in this town, as a rule, is our sheriff, of all people. Last night he slapped a member of the town council, name of Thad Cooper, at the Paradise Saloon, and today he threw a visitor bodily into the middle of the street. I understand he behaved provocatively toward you too.”

  “Nothing serious.”

  “I disagree with you. I think it’s very serious. A sheriff is supposed to be the paragon of law and order in a town, not the worst troublemaker of all. To tell you the truth, Captain Stone, I and other members of the town council want to get rid of Rawlins. He’s an embarrassment to everybody and a threat to public safety. The problem is that we can’t let him go unless we have a good man to replace him with.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Stone said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know anything about being a lawman. Last night I realized how unqualified I really am. I’ll last out the month if I can, because I gave you my word that I would, but I’m not crazy about the job. Sheriff Rawlins seems to be maintaining law and order fairly well, although he’s not an easy man to deal with. I’d suggest you think twice about firing him.”

  “We could make it a very attractive proposition financially, you know,” Mayor Randlett said.

  “Money will be of no use to me in the cemetery, and that’s where I’ll wind up if I become your sheriff.” He looked at Mayor Randlett. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that job is? Do you know what it’s like to confront angry drunken men who’re armed to the teeth? I know Rawlins is a drunkard, but he’s held the job for twenty years and made this town as safe as any on the frontier. I think you should give him the extra money, not me.”

  Mayor Randlett and his daughter looked at each other.

  “Sorry you feel that way,” Mayor Randlett said to Stone. “I don’t want to be overbearing, but we’d really like you to stay. Are you sure there’s nothing we could do to change your mind? We’re prepared to go to considerable lengths to retain you.”

  “No chance,” Stone replied. “Sorry.”

  Jennifer gave her father another look, and he gave up. In silence, the three of them ate their chicken soup. Stone continued to glance at Jennifer out of the corner of his eye. He’d noticed the silent communication between her and her father, and realized that his red-haired young beauty had a lot to say about what went on in Petie, but most people probably didn’t know it.

  She was a beautiful young woman and someday she’d inherit all her father’s vast holdings. The man who marries her will be a lucky son of a gun, he thought. She glanced at him, and he looked down at his food. I’d better not think about her too much, he said to himself, otherwise I’m liable to get in more trouble than I’m in already.

  Rawlins stomped into the Paradise Saloon, scanned the tables quickly, and made his way to the bar.

  “Whiskey.”

  He was looking for Deke Casey, to keep track of him, but Deke Casey wasn’t there. Rawlins downed a glass of whiskey, left the Paradise, and walked to the Acme, pushing through the swinging doors.

  “Whiskey.”

  He looked around, trying not to be obvious, but Deke Casey wasn’t here either. Had he left town? What the hell was going on?

  He drained his glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and walked outside. He thought he’d search the town, first one side of the street and then the other.

  He made his way down the sidewalk, his gait steady although he’d been drinking since he got out of bed that morning. Stopping in front of Bob’s Barbershop, he struck a match against the side of the building and lit a stogie. Then he continued his search, and men stepped out of his way. Some crossed to the other side of the street to avoid him. Nobody wanted a run-in with Sheriff Rawlins.

  He was courteous to ladies, touching his finger to the brim of his hat and muttering something friendly whenever he passed one of them. He’d been taught to respect women, but their husbands and brothers were liars and low schemers, in his opinion.

  He spotted Casey, sitting on the bench in front of the hardware store. Rawlins didn’t slow down or give any sign that he’d seen Casey. He just kept walking, passing him and the blond man sitting beside him, but Rawlins’s senses were wide awake, and he was listening for the click of a hammer being cocked. If he heard it, he was prepared to spin around and send forth a hail of lead.

  But there was no click of a hammer, and Rawlins kept moving on. Schuler turned to Casey and smirked. “Fuckin’ old fool,” he said.

  “Don’t underestimate Buck R
awlins,” Casey said. “He’s a tough old bird.”

  “Don’t look so tough to me.”

  “We don’t want a run-in with him. It’s John Stone we want.”

  Deke Casey turned and looked at Rawlins’s back as the sheriff of Petie moved farther away on the boardwalk. Casey wasn’t aware that he’d seen Rawlins in the Lanesboro jail ten years ago. A lot of lawmen had been on the scene, coming and going, and Rawlins hadn’t stood out in his mind. A good memory wasn’t one of Deke Casey’s strong points, but he was able to plan robberies like military operations and bring them off successfully most of the time.

  “John Stone should be comin’ on duty pretty soon,” Casey said. “Keep yer eyes open for him.”

  “The man who shoots John Stone would be famous,” Schuler replied. “He’d git his name in the papers.”

  “Forget about it,” Casey told him. “Don’t be a damn fool all yer life.”

  “You don’t think I can take him?”

  “I don’t know if you could or not, but we’re not gonna play it that way.”

  “It’d be the easiest way. I’d just egg him on and shoot him down.”

  “You really think you could take him?”

  “I know I could.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I never run into nobody faster than me yet.”

  “There’s always the first time.”

  “John Stone just had one lucky day, that’s all. Lemme draw on him, Deke. It’s the bestest way to git rid of him. If all of us try it at the same time, it’ll be too messy.”

  Casey looked at Schuler, who wasn’t the first fast gun he’d known in his life, and they all had the same trait, an eagerness to test themselves again and again in the most dangerous competition of all. But Schuler was right when he said it’d be messy if all of them tried to shoot Stone down at the same time. Maybe he should let Schuler do the dirty work. It certainly would be easier that way.

  “I’ll think it over,” Casey said.

  Schuler smiled. He could see that Casey was moving closer to his position. He reached down to his Colt and wrapped his fingers around the barrel. John Stone, he thought, you’re as good as dead.